A Firecracker Life

Listen friends, if you will stay with me in this message and hear it with a ready mind and an open heart, I believe God can use this message to completely transform your life and ministry. Bear in mind that no methodology or religious movement can transform your walk with God, but we can gain some benefit by having a process to go through. There are some truths in this message that may be of some help to you.

Not everything in here is assumed to be employed by all persons. Oddly, one truth may stand out to one person with great benefit, and that same truth may be utterly useless to another. God meets us where we are, but everything in this message, friends, is backed up by Scripture, as you will see.

Our consistency in our walk with God boils down to our love relationship with Jesus. If we are out of step with Him, it's because we love our sin more than we love Him. Peter denied our Lord three times, because at the time, he loved his skin more than his master, despite all his bold proclamations and promises otherwise.

But Peter learned that the Christian life leads to a cross, and that's what this message is about, friends. There are some vital doctrines missing in our churches today. You will seldom ever hear a message on the surrendered life.

Few pastors today are even familiar with such Christian classics of old that stirred and challenged multitudes of generations of Christians through the years. Who today has read the following books? Born Crucified, by L.E. Maxwell. Bone of His Bone, by F.G. Hegel.

The Way of the Cross, by Gregory Mantle. The Christ Life for the Self Life, by F.B. Meyer. Because of this lack, it's doubtful you will hear a message today on the fullness of the Spirit, or the surrendered life, or the cross in the life of a believer.

The modern church can do much through money and manpower, but the church of old operated on prayer and holy ghost power. If you hunger, friend, for a deeper walk with God, if you hunger, friend, for more consistency with God, then this message is for you. If you long for a life of victory that seems to have been out of your grasp, don't lose hope, this message is for you, friend.

Brother Pastor, if you long for power in the pulpit, then this message is for you. If you have had failed attempts at giving yourself to the Lordship of Christ, and it never worked for you, to where you feel this teaching is just hogwash, then this message is for you, friend. Years ago, I was asked to write an endorsement on the biography of F.J. Hegel.

This is what I wrote, and it's pertinent to our study today. Those who camp with God know that atop Mount Sinai, the air is rarefied, and that the climb itself, fraught with rocky and foreboding cliffs, dissuades many travelers from even making the attempt. F.J. Hegel knew what it was like to breathe that pure air, for he lived in that higher realm of the Christian life many hope for, but few attain.

Hegel also knew the cost and sacrifice involved in that ascent, and he was well familiar with the only pathway to the top, where the Most High dwells, the path of brokenness that leads to a cross. The great theme of F.J. Hegel, the cross and the life of the believer, was the secret to his power and anointing. This book should be a must-read for any believer who longs to live life at the top, and to experience that victory in abundance, available to all who are willing to embrace the cross as Hegel did, and as Christ commands.

Well, let me make a statement here, friend. The higher Christian life is really what the Christian life is supposed to be like all along. It's the New Testament Christianity that we read our New Testament, we see how those Christians turned the world upside down, and we're not doing a whole lot.

Well, there's been a great falling away, there's been a great debasement, but I'm telling you, friends, the normal Christian life is what I'm preaching today. I once heard Vance Havner make a statement, and it's always stuck with me and challenged me, but this is what he said, If we serve such a dynamite God, then how come so many of us are living firecracker lives? Well, his statement really resonated with me, because we don't have to live below our potential in God. We don't have to live a firecracker life.

We don't have to live on an inconsistent walk with God, which is like an elevator, which I term elevator Christianity, where one day you are in the penthouse suite, enjoying sweet fellowship with God, in victory, then perhaps incredibly, the next day or week, quite suddenly, because of sin, you're down in the basement of defeat. This up and down walk with God, unfortunately, is the average Christian life today, but it's not meant to be that way. This firecracker life, believer lives in defeat and discouragement, and longs for a more consistent walk with God, but though he may find consistency for a little while, it doesn't last, and down he goes again, into the basement of defeat, but it doesn't have to be that way, friends.

I don't believe in the doctrine of perfection, but we can have a more consistent walk with God, and we will find out today, by study of the following scripture verses. You can jot these down, friends. Put them in the margin of your Bibles.

Are you ready? Here we go. Gospel of Luke, chapter 4, verse 1. Ephesians 5.18. Galatians 5.18. Galatians 2.20. And our primary focus today, friends, will be in Romans chapter 6, in verses 1 through 22, and primarily verses 3 through 14. We'll wrap things up with a brief passage from Matthew's Gospel from chapter 7, in verses 24 to 39.

In a day of moral chaos in society, in antinomianism in the church, where believers believe it's acceptable to God to have a sin in religion, the doctrine of the cross in the life of a believer and the fullness of the Spirit are missing and forgotten doctrines of the church. Few pastors preach with power and authority. Fewer still know personal holiness unto God.

It's as if the modern church has become one big fraternity party where anything goes. And our view of God is a sin-tolerating God, where there exists no fear of God in the church. And when there is no fear of God among God's people, it will result in a lawless society where there's no fear of God in the land.

When the church loses her way, everyone and everything goes into a ditch. The following message can absolutely change your life, friend, in regard to your walk with God and usefulness to God. I owe a debt of gratitude to my homiletical mentor, the late Dr. Stephen F. Offord, for being a living example of holiness to me and teaching me the following teachings.

I was in his first graduating class of his school for preachers. He taught me how to preach. Stephen Offord taught me how to have an anointing for preaching with authority.

He modeled a life of holiness unto God continually. He was my biggest spiritual influence and under his powerful preaching, God turned my entire life upside down and changed the course of my entire life from business to ministry. Dr. Offord taught me the following doctrines on the spirit-filled life, or fullness of the spirit, the crucified life, or the surrendered life, the cross, and the life of a believer.

Let's begin our study, friends, with Luke 4, verse 1. Here now is the word of God. May the Spirit of the Lord bless the reading of His holy word. And Jesus, being full of the Holy Ghost, returned from Jordan and was led by the Spirit into the wilderness.

The two main words I want to bring out from this verse, friends, are the words pertaining to the Holy Spirit. These words are full and led. This is where all the power lies for ministry in life.

The doctrine of the fullness of the Spirit flows out of the doctrine of the cross in the life of a believer. I want to read you the expanded translation from Weiss' New Testament version of Luke 1-4 in the Greek for it has much fuller meaning. And Jesus, in the control of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was continually being led by the Spirit in the uninhabited region.

The key thought here, friends, is this. When it reads, and Jesus being full of the Holy Ghost means He was operating continually and completely in the control of the Holy Ghost. That's where His power flowed from.

And that's where our power needs to flow from as well, friends. We have to appreciate it. We need to appropriate it.

This is where we stop living firecracker lives and have lives of dynamite. Dynamite power and authority. The anointing of the Spirit brings us victory in our walk with God.

Consistency in our walk with Him. It gives us power and authority in the pulpit for God to use us more for His glory. Well, let's go to Ephesians 5-18.

Let me read this to us, friends. And be not drunk with wine, wherein is excess, but be filled with the Spirit. Here again, we turn to the expanded translation in the Greek, which reads, instead of be filled with the Spirit, but constantly, be constantly controlled by the Spirit.

The thought here is, when a person is intoxicated by wine or alcohol, then that person is controlled by the alcohol to their hurt. The last time I was controlled by alcohol and drank it was in 1974. I was a student in college and a member of St. Micaiah fraternity.

And one Saturday night, a fraternity brother convinced me to go to some bars with him and shoot tequila with him, which I did to my regret, for I came back to the frat house drunk and I picked a fight with a brother much bigger than me, a football player. And I was always this skinny guy, so I was outmatched greatly. But I was so drunk and intoxicated, I didn't care.

I not only insulted this man verbally, challenging his manhood, but when that didn't get a reaction out of him, I picked up a broom and began to beat him with it over the head. That's all I remember. I came to, for I was unconscious, and I came to on my back on the floor with a swollen face and my shirt was torn.

I was told by friends that he punched me so hard it took the door off the hinges when I hit it. And it took several fraternity brothers to pull him off of me before he killed me. Well, that's the last time I ever touched liquor.

Never again. I learned my lesson. And the shirt he tore was my favorite expensive shirt, all because of drunken stupidity.

The thought here, in God's word, is this. Instead of being controlled by booze or wine, be controlled by the Holy Spirit and that leads us right back to Jesus in our passage from Luke's Gospel where he enters the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. And while he is being controlled by the Spirit and led by the Spirit, he has success there.

And that is what the doctrine of the fullness of the Spirit will do, friends. It will give us success against the enemy. It can set you free from sin.

But getting this fullness of the Spirit involves a crisis. Like Jacob of old, you must come to your very own place of surrender to God. But it doesn't stop there.

You have to have a process to go through to continue on for the rest of your days. Or we'll miss this anointing of the Spirit. We'll bypass the whole thing.

You just can't go to God and tell him you want a spirit for authority in ministry and power over sin. That won't do. That's the wrong reason.

This is where thousands of sincere believers have come short of this blessing. You must go through this process. It's a scriptural process which leads us now to the heart and soul of my message today, friends.

Our process I'll focus on today is on our yielding to God. I will spend the remainder of this message on teaching us how to yield to God to obtain this blessing. This is where we camp out in Romans chapter 6. This chapter can be called the Emancipation Proclamation.

Are you ready, friend? Lend me your ears and receive these truths with a receptive heart. Let's begin by reading from Romans chapter 6. What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound? God forbid! How shall we that are dead to sin live any longer therein? Let me pause here, friends, to say we are either lost and dead in sin or redeemed by Christ and dead to sin. Well, let's continue with our text.

Know ye not that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into His death? Therefore we are buried with Him by baptism into death, that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so ye also should walk in newness of life. For if we've been planted together in the likeness of His death, we shall be also in the likeness of His resurrection. Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with Him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, rendered inoperative, put out of business, that henceforth we should not serve sin.

Now, if we be dead with Christ, we believe that we should also live with Him, knowing that Christ, being raised from the dead, dieth no more, death hath no more dominion over Him. For in that He died, He died unto death once, but in that He liveth, He liveth unto God. Likewise reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed to sin, but alive unto God, through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, that you should obey it in the lust thereof. Neither yield your members as instruments of unrighteousness unto sin, but yield yourselves unto God, as those that are alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness unto God. For sin shall not have dominion over you, for you are not under the law, but under grace.

What then? Shall we sin, because we are not under the law, but under grace? God forbid! Know ye not, that to whom you yield yourselves servants to obey, whether of sin unto death, or of obedience unto righteousness? Would God be thanked that ye were the servants of sin, which ye have obeyed from the heart, that form of doctrine which was delivered you, being then made free from sin, ye became the servants of righteousness? I speak after the manner of man, because of the infirmity of your flesh, as ye have yielded your members servants to uncleanness, and to iniquity, unto iniquity. Even so now, yield your members servants to righteousness, unto holiness. I will stop here with this whole issue, friends, of going deeper with God.

This whole issue of a life of surrender will never amount to a hill of beans, unless ye go through the proper process of understanding, or union, with Christ, in his death, burial, and resurrection. Your best intentions, and your most heartfelt promises to surrender to God won't last. They'll crumble to dust.

You'll be once again wallowing in your hog pen of sin, like a dirty hog, rolling around in the muck and mire, enjoying being covered in filth. Your best resolutions will be as a leaf in the wind, unless, unless ye understand and grasp what I'm getting ready to share with you, friend, regarding our oneness with Christ, in his death, burial, and resurrection. Give me your attention, friend.

This is a critical component, and that's where the power of a yielded life comes in. You can continue to live way below your potential in God as a firecracker life, as Vance Havner called it, or you can have a dynamite life through Christ our Lord. It all comes down to this issue of yielding and obedience.

The apostle Paul states, Let not sin, but therefore reign, in your mortal body, that you should obey it in the lust thereof. Neither yield your members as instruments of unrighteousness unto sin, but yield yourselves under God. Here Paul characterizes this concept of sin in terms of a king, and you can use this concept of self, friend, that self can be a king sitting on the throne of the life, but self must be dethroned.

You are not to allow sin to reign. You are not to allow self to reign as king in your body. Don't miss this, friends.

Our entire attitude of prayer should be after this when we say, Lord, grant me the grace by thine indwelling self and by the power of the Spirit to overcome sin. As of this day, as of this instant, I hereby choose that king sin shall not reign in my mortal body, and that sin will have no place in my seeing, no place in my speaking, no place in my thinking, or in my acting. I will give no place to loving sin for it to reign in me.

Now, friend, before you can go any further with God, you need to make that choice. I can't make it for you. You have to make that desire to be your desire of your heart and will.

You choose. Even God can't do this for you. You need to make this choice.

You can do it today. You can do it right now in your heart. This matter of yielding demands two things from every Christian.

The first is the dethronement of self, the dethronement of sin. The other is the enthronement of God, the enthronement of Christ. First of all, let's look at the dethronement of sin.

Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body that you should obey it in the lust thereof. Listen, friend. You can't have Christ in your sins as well.

You can't take part of Christ as Savior and reject Him as Lord. You cannot condemn sin in the unsaved and condone it in the saints. You simply cannot have sin as a reigning factor in your life.

You won't do. Jesus never preached a sinning religion. You get nowhere with God as far as victory is concerned unless you deal with this issue of asking God for His help in dethroning self and sin.

That you're prepared to make that choice. That you're prepared to make that choice today. That you're going to be done with it.

Be done with it in every form whatsoever. You will not allow sin to reign as king any longer. Lord, I'm so sincere about this.

I'd rather die. I'd rather have a bullet shot through me than to allow sin to reign in my mortal body. This is my choice.

God can't do this for me. This is my choice. I have to choose to dethrone sin as king.

And it is not going to reign in my body any longer. It's not going to have the throne of my life. No, not now.

Not no more. I mean business with you, Lord. This is my choice to dethrone king sin.

I can't live the Christian life in the own flesh. It's a supernatural life that only you can live through me. But I have to have the desire to dethrone sin and self in my life.

Now, friends, we can move on to the second item. The demands of a yielded life are not only the dethronement of sin, but the enthronement of God. Here, Paul sets before us God in all that He is and His eternal being and His great sovereignty as revealed in Christ by the Holy Spirit.

The thought here is not only God the Father but God the Son and God the Holy Spirit who comes to dwell in us. The total Godhead. God has to come in as God.

Yield yourselves unto God. If you've dethroned sin by an act of your will, your choice is then to enthrone God. And it's the word yield here.

It's a very important word. It's the same word present in chapter 12. And it has its roots in an Old Testament word which means the handing over of a gift.

Here is my throne, Lord. By choice, I have dethroned sin. Sin will never sit upon that throne again.

I hand it over to You. I give it to You as a gift. Come take possession of that throne of my life.

I hand it over now. Never to take it back again. The whole idea, friend, is handing over a gift.

You never hand over a gift to take it back again. Isn't that true? When you hand over a gift, it's irrevocable. When I hand over the throne of my heart, it's not to experiment for a week or two just to see whether or not this kind of thing works.

It's not to try it for a matter of weeks or months to see whether or not this truth is valid. If I'm going to be fair with the Word of God and honest before God, I hand over my life to the indwelling Lord. By His Holy Spirit, I hand over that throne not for a day, not for a week, not for a month, not for a year, but forever.

Forever. When the Lord Jesus Christ came out of eternity, His language was, Lo, I come to do Thy will, O my God. Thy laws are within my heart to do the will of God.

And if ever we have a supreme example of total yieldedness to the Father, living in the power of the Holy Spirit, it's our precious Lord. But the Savior didn't accept His yieldedness to the Father complete until He came to the very end of His life when He cried one word in the Greek, It is finished, which means yielded, dedicated, consecrated. This must be our attitude to the very end of our life as well, friend.

We must turn now to the dynamic of a yielded life. Well, how's this carried out? This whole matter of yieldedness is central to a Spirit-controlled life. And this is where the rubber meets the road, friends.

If you don't understand what I'm saying here regarding this yielded life, this whole thing will make not much sense to you. It won't help you very much. But listen.

Listen to the Word of God. I'm not saying this. This isn't some man or a movement teaching this.

This is the Apostle Paul stating this in verse 13. Neither yield ye your members as instruments of unrighteousness unto sin, but yield yourselves unto God as those that are alive from the dead. And your members as instruments of righteousness unto God.

Well, the focus, the emphasis I want to look at here, friend, is the word alive, alive from the dead. Well, what does this mean? This aliveness, or livingness, in the power of the resurrection unleashed in a Spirit-led life. This whole issue of going deeper with God to a life of victory will never amount to a hill of beans or have any lasting effect.

You just can't say, Lord, I surrender to your Lordship and that's it. I'm done. I surrender all.

It won't last, friends. I know from experience you must have the initial surrender, the crisis, so to speak. You must have that memorable encounter with God.

But you must go through the process on a daily basis that brings consistency with God. What do you mean? What do you mean? I mean that your vows to God, your best intentions won't last. They'll crumble to dust.

You'll find yourself once again up to your neck in sin. What I'm getting ready to share with you, friend, regarding our oneness with Christ in His death, burial, and resurrection, I'll put it in this three-way form. It's right here in our text.

First of all, the recognition that I have died. I have died with Christ. Verse 3, know ye not that so many of us, as we're baptized into Jesus Christ, were baptized into His death? Look again at verse 6, knowing this, that our old man, he's crucified with Him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, put out of business, rendered inoperative, that henceforth we should not serve sin.

My friend, as a born-again believer, you have to recognize this redeeming fact that when Christ died 2,000 years ago on Calvary, I died. If I'm counting on the Holy Spirit to release the resurrection power of Christ in my life, where out comes this mighty power of aliveness of the risen Christ in my life, I must realize this redeeming fact that by virtue of presupposition, I have been united with Christ in death, I have been reunited with Christ in burial, and I'm reunited with Christ in resurrection. Our oneness with Christ in His death, burial, and resurrection means this, when Christ died, your old life was terminated.

When Christ was buried, He took that old life and buried it. Oh, the old nature will always be with us. You must keep your eye on it, friend.

You'll always be just as wicked, just as, you can't change, you can't better the old life, you can't improve it, but it can be buried. The old man, the body of sin, our oneness in the burial of Jesus means that our body of sin has been buried, put out from view, put out of sight, in the attempt to go back into the old life and dig up that which God has crucified. God is condemned.

God is buried. It's a violation of your oneness with Christ and burial. You must accept and acknowledge this redeeming fact, friend.

Hang on to it every day. Recognize simply this, that when Christ died, I died. When Christ was buried, my old life was put into the grave and God doesn't want to see that.

I don't want to see it. And if the devil comes knocking at the door, I say, to Jesus, Lord, you go answer the door. I'm going to fail if I answer it.

You've got to rely on the Holy Spirit, friend. What's he doing here? The old body, he's buried, forgotten. Thank God, when he died, I died.

When he was buried, I was buried. But it means something more. It means union with Christ in resurrection from when he came out of the grave.

I'll say this, friend, that the release of the resurrection, life of Jesus Christ in us, can never be experienced except on the basis of my recognition of death and burial. And that's what Romans 8.13 really means. That if we live after the flesh, we shall die.

But if we, through the Spirit, do mortify the deeds of the body, we shall live. In other words, if we live in the flesh trying to copy Christ and trying to yield ourselves in ourselves, you'll just end in failure. The Christian life cannot be lived on good intentions.

It cannot be lived on vows in the flesh. The Christian life is a supernatural life that can only be lived by a power higher than me. A supernatural life that can only be lived by the power of the Holy Spirit.

How many times in my life did I say, Lord, here I am. I surrender to your Lordship. You be Lord of my life.

And I would have victory for a time. And that would end eventually in utter failure and despondency for sin. I'd go surrender again and again and again.

But listen friends, you surrender once, you go through this process daily. Believe this, we also have an indwelling Christ. Greater is He in me than He that is in the world.

I had to learn my oneness in Christ's death, burial, and resurrection. And you do too friends, who will never know the release of the resurrection life of Christ. But if we come to Him saying, Lord, the old man's been buried.

He has no place in this. And on the basis of this, I'm counting upon your Holy Spirit. I'm counting upon your Holy Spirit to apply the bearing power of the Savior in my life.

But I'm also counting on the Holy Spirit to release the resurrection power, life of Christ, in my life. And listen friends, listen friends, out comes the mighty power of the risen life of Christ into our life. Where that life is, where sin is dominant no longer.

Where that sin life has no dominion. I'm no longer dominated by sin. It may be dormant, but it's not dominant.

Listen friend, it's there, but it's not master. Why? Because another force is coming to operation. It's a force of counteraction.

It's a force that overcomes the gravitation of the old nature, just like the law of aerodynamics overcomes the force of gravity. When you're in that airplane and that great throttle is pushed forward and that mighty jet moves through the air with such power that you're thrown back into your seats, up, up, up, beyond the clouds, into the sunlight, soaring above everything. They would pull us down.

Why? Because of a new principle has been put in place. A new principle of life. Yes, the life of victory, the life of consistency, the life of purity.

When we recognize our oneness with Christ in His death, burial, and resurrection, we can say with the Apostle Paul, I have been crucified with Christ. Nevertheless, I live. Yet not I, but Christ liveth in me.

In the life which I now live in the flesh, in this body, I live by faith, a new principle, a rest of faith, in the indwelling Son of God who loved me and gave Himself for me. Friend, will you let Him demonstrate purity and victory in your life? Let's take some time now to get along with God in prayer and ask His Holy Spirit to apply these truths to our hearts as we've heard them and accepted them today. I'll lead us on in prayer, friends.

But look, this isn't a quick fix. You need your crisis. You need your own encounter.

You need your own surrender. But you've got to have a daily process, friend. You've got to have a daily reliance upon the Holy Spirit.

I can't stress that enough. You have to have daily dependence upon the Holy Spirit. Jesus said, for apart from me, you can do nothing, nothing, nothing.

Lord, we come to You for transformation. We come to You for change, change within, change without. I choose not to live a firecracker life any longer.

I'm sick and tired of constant defeat. I want victory, Lord. In Christ Jesus.

I want consistency in my walk with God. I choose to dethrone King Sin in my life right now. And I, with all my heart, ask You, Lord, to come into my life as God and sit and rule and reign on the throne of my heart where there is Your Lordship.

I desire that change, Lord. I want it. I want Your power to live the Christian life in a way of obedience to You to bring glory to the Father.

I want reality. Let this desire be permanent, lasting. May I come to You daily for it, for the fullness of Your Spirit, not just for today, but always, until You call or come.

I pray these things in the strong name of the Sovereign Son of God, our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.